


The Keeper of the Gotham Light

by MissNaya



Category: DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Anal Fingering, Begging, Facials, First Time, Fluff and Smut, Little Mermaid Elements, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Music, Mutual Pining, Oral Sex, Resolved Sexual Tension, Rimming, Sexual Frustration, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:46:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22482811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissNaya/pseuds/MissNaya
Summary: Dick is a mermaid who likes to collect items from the human world. Jason is a lighthouse keeper who spends most of his time alone. When a chance encounter brings them together, how will their lives intertwine?
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd
Comments: 15
Kudos: 428





	The Keeper of the Gotham Light

**Author's Note:**

> here it is, folks, another of my "sponsored" works, thanks to an anonymous prompter! this was originally supposed to be shorter, but I fell so in love with the idea that I couldn't help myself. I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
> 
> title is a riff off of "The Keeper of the Eddystone Light," a shanty about a lighthouse keeper sleeping with a mermaid. there are 2 other shanties referenced in this fic - Married to a Mermaid, and The Nightingale. go give them a listen somewhere if you wanna sing along!

Dick likes to follow ships.

Ships belong to humans, and humans drop the most _wonderful_ things. Containers made of hardened and painted clay; wooden boxes filled with packages of shredded green things like someone diced up some kelp; reflective glass in perfect ovals, set into shiny, flat silver with intricate decorations.

He likes the shiny things the most. Sometimes they come in the form of rings small enough to fit on his fingers. Other times, they’re attached to long, golden ropes that he can sometimes fit around his waist. Still others, there are flat circles with little faces carved on them, human faces. He’s always wondered what makes a human so special that other humans would take the time to make little portraits of them on metal.

He finds out one stormy night, after following a ship for hours. Storms are nice. They churn the water, make his stomach turn in fun knots as he fights against the waves - and most importantly, they make the humans drop all sorts of things. He’s already collected several hard metal containers and a few bottles with dark liquid inside by the time he notices a strange, blinking light overhead.

There aren’t normally lights during storms, save for the bright, flashy ones that only ever last as long as it takes to blink an eye. This one’s different. It’s constant, starting thin and far off, then growing, peaking when it gets closest to him before it thins out and vanishes in the opposite direction. Like it’s moving in a big circle overhead.

He peeks up above the roiling waves, and that’s when he sees it: a small island with a sharp cliff face, with a tall human-made structure on the very top. He thinks the word for it is _light house,_ and he’s seen them before, rarely; and what a treat it is every time! Ships turn so sharply to avoid them that they often spill off even more treasures, which he’s all too happy to take.

If he’d ducked down then, gone back under the water to stop the waves splashing on his face, he’d have missed it. But something possesses him to look at this one for a while longer, which is when he spots something toppling off the side of the cliff itself.

Something from a real human structure, not just a ship? He can’t even imagine what sorts of things the humans keep to themselves on dry land! In a flash, he dives down, his tail pumping fast to get him to the rocky area under the cliff.

There are less boulders than he’s used to at the base of this piece of land, and that turns out to be a good thing. This new treasure, from the pattern of bubbles leading to the surface, looks like it just missed smashing into them. The dark shape slows as it gets farther down, and at first glance, it looks like some sort of heavy fabric. Then it turns in the water, and Dick sees something amidst the twirling darkness.

A face. It’s a human face.

A human!

He doesn’t know much about humans, but he knows they can’t breathe underwater. Panicked, he swims forward and grabs it. More bubbles escape the human’s lips, and, grunting from the weight, Dick hauls it up to the surface.

The cliff slopes downward on the other side, leading into a sandy beach. It’s there that Dick deposits the human, just out of range of the thrashing waves. But the human doesn’t even stir. Rain beats down on its face, and all Dick can think is, _air, it needs air, not water._ So he leans down, covers the human’s lips with his own, and breathes in.

It takes a few breaths, heavy and desperate, before the human rears up under him, regurgitating the water the way whales shoot it out of their blowholes. It makes an ugly coughing noise, spitting up more water until it’s spent. By that time, Dick has already shimmied down the beach, waves lapping at his tail. He’s been around plenty of humans, but he’s never allowed _them_ to see _him._

The human looks up at him, squinting through the rain, and Dick turns tail and dives back under the water, quickly swimming out of view.

He loses the ship, but doesn’t mind. Not tonight.

* * *

The next few days, Jason deals with one hell of a cold. Tossing and turning in his modest bed at the base of the lighthouse, he figures he must be hallucinating. All he dreams of are shiny black scales that shimmer blue whenever lightning strikes in the sky, and of pale blue fins retreating into the waves. Black and blue, like the hair and eyes of the boy - man - fish - _whatever_ it was that he could have sworn he woke up to after the wind hurled him off the side of the cliff.

It had been a stupid thing to do, going out there in that weather. But he always tries to get a look at the names inscribed on the sides of ships that pass him by. One of them, one day, he hopes, might be the _RMS Catherine,_ the one his father boarded the last time he was seen alive.

He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he ever sees that ship passing him by. He just knows he has to check.

And finally, it seemed his overconfidence had caught up with him. He remembers thinking, in those few seconds it took him to plummet to the water below, _maybe I’ll see you soon, pop._

He’s not sure how he got all the way from one side of the small island to the other. It’s a hell of a swim even when the waters are calm and clear. Let alone unconscious, in a thunderstorm, drowning and bruised.

He had to have been rescued by someone. It’s just that it makes no sense, the someone he thinks he saw.

_Mermaids are sailor’s tales,_ he tells himself by the time he’s well enough to sit bundled in a blanket at his table and nurse a cup of coffee. _And you’re not a sailor. You’re hardly a competent lightkeeper._

Still, he finds himself spending more than one night squinting out over the ocean, straining for any glimpse of something unusual.

Every errant wave and breaching dolphin puts him on edge. It’s stupid, really. Wishful thinking, about as wishful as imagining his father’s vessel didn’t end up at the bottom of the Atlantic.

But then, one night, he hears singing.

* * *

On the one fin: Dick loves humans. The way they waddle like penguins or shuffle like crabs. The things they wear on their bodies and heads, sometimes stuffed with feathers and flowers, other times accentuated by those shiny things he loves. The funny words they shout to each other, like “ _starboard_ ” and “ _admiral_ ” and “ _landlubber._ ” The way they sing, loud and out of tune but confident, “ _Blow high, blow low, and so blow we._ ”

On the other: He’s never met one. Not, y’know, face-to-face. He’s always been a sociable person, making friends with other mers across the many seas, but there’s something about humans that makes them… different. Intimidating. He’s heard tales of their barbaric behavior from other mers, about the way they hunt and the wars they wage. He’s seen for himself the way they sometimes stab at the water with sharp sticks, unafraid to take down even the largest whales.

So, every time he’d ever thought of swimming up to meet one of them, he’d always back down in the end. He hasn’t seen his mother since he was a guppy, but her warnings still echo in his head: _They’ll scoop you up and mount you on their walls if they get a chance. Or worse, keep you trapped with nowhere to go, forever._

She knew how terrifying the thought was to Dick ever since he started swimming: the idea of being stuck in one place, never able to go where the current takes him, until the end of time? He wouldn’t be able to do it.

But… _This_ human hasn’t stabbed at the water with sharp sticks.

_This_ human doesn’t even have a boat, it seems.

Dick watches it stalk the beach sometimes, rubbing a hand over its chin as it stares at the shoreline. Looking with bunched-up brows out over the waves, peering into them, confused and unsure.

It is, he admits to himself, a very good-looking human.

But he’s still not sure. So one night, when the moon hangs high in the sky and paints its reflection on the water, Dick gets an idea.

He sings.

* * *

“ _There was a gay young farmer,_

_Who liv'd on Salisbury plain;_

_He lov'd a rich Knight's daughter dear!_

_And she lov'd him again._ ”

It’s beautiful. Probably the most beautiful singing voice he’s ever heard. Almost two voices in one, higher than he’d expect from a man, yet lower than he’d expect from a woman. It bounces off of the rocks of the cliff and drifts above the waves, in perfect tune.

“ _The Knight he was distressed,_

_That they should sweethearts be._

_So he had the farmer soon pressed,_

_And sent him off to sea._ ”

He’s heard the legends, of course. Sirens. Half-human, half-fish creatures, who lure you in with their beautiful voices and then drag you to your doom. But this doesn’t feel like a lure. Despite its unnatural qualities, the voice doesn’t weasel into his mind and cause him to start walking in a trance toward the sound, off the cliff.

He doesn’t even _want_ to see, really.

But he could listen for hours.

The next few nights, the song drifts around the island. First from the cliff, sharp and unforgiving. Jason steers clear of it, worried that some mesmerizing spell will overtake him and cause him to plunge back down into the rocky waves.

But then, if this… creature, if this thing wanted him dead, wouldn’t it have snapped him up when he fell before? Surely such a monster would be opportunistic, not toy around with him like this.

Maybe that’s why he follows the sound as it moves, each night getting closer and closer to the opposite end of the island.

“ _'Twas on the deep Atlantic,_

_Midst Equinoctial gales;_

_This young farmer fell overboard_

_Among the sharks and whales._ ”

Some nights, he sees it. Or at least, he thinks he does. The moonlight painting the ocean will occasionally ripple, and he sees a fin, more delicate than a dolphin’s, smaller than a whale’s, leisurely breach the surface. It may just be a trick of the low light, but he catches the way black scales glimmer blue, like an oil slick enchanted with something magical.

“ _We lowered a boat to find him,_

_We thought to see his corse,_

_When up to the top he came with a bang,_

_And sang in a voice so hoarse._ ”

By the time the voice makes it to the beach on the opposite end of the island, a full month has passed. The moon waxes and wanes above them, and hangs as a near-perfect circle in the sky when Jason finally steps into the sand at high tide.

“‘ _My comrades and my messmates,_

_Oh, do not weep for me,_

_For I'm married to a mermaid,_

_At the bottom of the deep blue sea.’_ ”

A young man stares back at him, waves lapping at his waist. He’s as beautiful as his song. There’s the blue-black hair Jason remembers, and the lighter blue eyes that seem to almost shine in the moonlight. He’s heard of sea creatures that emit light all on their own, even deep below the waves, and thinks that this must be what’s going on, because he’s never seen a human with eyes like that.

On careful footing, he steps closer, chiding himself all the way. _You’ll get grabbed,_ he thinks, _taken by it, devoured under the water and forgotten by the few people who know you’re here._

Again, he remembers his father. His tired, sun-weathered father, bidding him goodbye before trudging onto a ship that never found its way to the opposite shore.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, dying like that. Worth the risk, at least, to come into contact with something that’s supposed to be a myth.

The creature opens its mouth and continues to sing.

“ _She came at once unto him,_

_And gave him her white hand,_

_Saying, 'I have waited long, my dear,_

_To welcome you to land.’_ ”

He shivers. Whether it’s from the chill of the summer-changing-to-autumn air, or from the melodic voice flowing over the waves like honey into a cup of tea, he’s not sure. He stops when the waves just barely touch the toes of his boots.

“‘ _Go to your ship and tell them,_

_You'll leave them all for me;_

_For you're married to a mermaid_

_At the bottom of the deep blue sea.'_ ”

There’s a long stretch of silence after that. They just stare at each other, Jason and the ocean-boy, hiding only God knows what underneath the surface of the water. That tail? Or something more sinister?

He licks his lips and tastes the salt from the sea’s wind.

“If you’re trying to get me to come out there with you, you should try a less foreboding song,” he finally says.

To his surprise, he gets a reply.

“I thought marriage was— Oh.” It frowns, and like this, it looks like any other boy his age, awkward and uncertain. “Don’t humans like—? Is it the part about being under the sea? Because we could get married on land, if— Wait, that wouldn’t work.”

Jason blinks. He blinks again. Tilting his head, wondering if he needs to clean out his ears, he just says, “What?”

“Oh, no. This isn’t how it was supposed to go,” the young man mutters, soft enough that Jason almost doesn’t hear him over the crash of the waves. “This isn’t— Sorry.”

And then, in a flash, he turns, and Jason sees for certain this time the part where human flesh ends and fish scales begin as the man — _mer_ man — dives back under the sea and swims off.

* * *

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Singing a song about dragging a human under the water? What was he _thinking?_

Well, he knows exactly what he was thinking. That humans love to sing, for one. It always seems to unite them, so many shipmates with their arms around each other, swaying back and forth as they belt out rhyming tunes. That it’s a song about a mermaid, for two. And that this “marriage” concept, one that so many humans seem to wax poetic about, is an important bonding ritual between them.

It could be worse, he reasons with himself. He could have launched into _Yo, Ho, Blow the Man Down._

Dick expects the human to avoid him after that. He wouldn’t blame it for being cautious. Maybe, despite all the warnings, they’re as afraid of mers as mers are of them.

But it doesn’t. Though Dick keeps his distance after that, he sees the human every night, after the light comes on above them, walking the length of the island, pausing near the sandy shore.

And then, when the moon starts to get thinner in the sky, the human sets down a small box, right where sand starts to turn into plants.

Music begins to play.

* * *

Those nights when the ocean does nothing but hiss as it cracks against the island, Jason finds himself restless. Where’s the merman gone? Has it abandoned him entirely? Did he ruin everything by opening his big, stupid mouth?

He spends a lot of time thinking about what it said. _“I thought marriage was—”_

Marriage? Do mercreatures know about marriage? Clearly, this one’s familiar enough with the word to figure out it has meaning to humans. But what was its aim, singing about it?

He thinks hard about what he does before he does it. The music box belonged to his mother, his father told him, before she ran off to pursue dreams of adventure too big for a woman from a small town. It doesn’t play as clearly as it used to, sounding more of tin and less of music sometimes, but it still works well enough that Jason can hum along to its distinct tune.

Maybe mermaids aren’t the only ones who can use music as a lure.

The first night he puts it out, he hides behind a tree some ways up the coast, and watches and waits. He thinks he sees something far out where the water gets deeper, but it vanishes by the time the music box unwinds itself and fades back into silence.

The next few nights, that shape gets closer. First just a head, then a chin, then shoulders-up, always cautiously staring at the box, which Jason has started leaving closer to the shoreline.

When a week goes by, he starts hearing a hum mingle with the tune. Even without words, the merman’s voice makes Jason’s heart beat faster in his chest, his blood rising to his face. It’s a perfect rendition, a lilting melody that threatens to unlock some long-forgotten memory from before Jason was old enough to speak. Of golden hair and painted lips, of being rocked in someone’s arms.

He lets himself move closer. So does the merman. When the moon waxes again, Jason finds himself sitting on the sand, music box a few feet in front of him, wet on the bottom as every fifth wave manages to get close enough to lap at it.

The merman, too, has drawn closer. Its tail flaps leisurely up and down, splashing in the shallows. It’s stunning, a painting come to life, more magical than any combination of inks and paints could hope to capture.

“What are the words?” it asks finally, after they spend a long, long time just staring at each other, and at the box.

“Oh, I—” Jason’s cheeks go red. “I can’t sing. Definitely not like, well— you.”

The way the young merman smiles up at him, laying its head on its folded arms, fills Jason with peace. Serenity. It tamps down on his embarrassment; he feels like, if it’ll make the boy smile, he’d do anything.

“I don’t mind,” it says.

Jason looks away and clears his throat. “Well, if you insist…”

It must have been ages since he heard the words. He doesn’t know where in the depths of his mind he pulls them from, but when he shuts his eyes, it’s like something else is possessing him, something with knowledge he doesn’t have in his waking moments.

“ _One morning, one morning, one morning in May_

_I spied a young couple all on the highway_

_And one was a lady so bright and so fair_

_And the other was a soldier, a brave volunteer_

_“Good morning, good morning, good morning to thee,_

_Now where are you going, my pretty lady?_

_I'm going to travel to the banks of the sea_

_To see the waters gliding, hear the nightingales sing._

_“They hadn't been there but an hour or two_

_Till out of his knapsack a fiddle he drew_

_The tune that he played caused the valleys to ring._

_O harken, says the lady, how the nightingales sing._

_“Pretty lady, pretty lady, 'tis time to give o're._

_O no, pretty soldier, please play one tune more._

_I'd rather hear your fiddle at the touch of one string_

_Than to see the waters gliding, hear the nightingales sing._

_“Pretty soldier, pretty soldier, will you marry me?_

_O no, pretty lady that never can be._

_I've a wife back in London and children twice three._

_Two wives in the army is too many for me._ ”

When he opens his eyes again, the merman is staring at him with an expression far softer than he’s expecting. It looks… relaxed. Transfixed. Again, Jason licks his lips and coughs.

“That’s, er, that’s it.”

The boy smiles, showing teeth that are flat and human, not shark-like and jagged like Jason realizes he was expecting. “I like your voice.” And then, after a pause, “Can you tell me about marriage?”

Jason runs a hand through his hair, and does.

* * *

A ceremony to join two humans together forever, in the eyes of both the law — which, it turns out, is a collection of rules that other humans put together — and their deity called “God.” He’s heard the name before, of course, in the context of “God damn it!” and “Godspeed” and sometimes, on perilous waters, “God save us all,” but he never really knew who it was before (and why He’s apparently so speedy).

To be honest, Dick doesn’t really understand it. There are too many reasons for it, and they’re jumbled in his head. A union for “legal purposes,” but also for the exchange of property, and yet still, somehow, for love and for mating? That humans mate for life with just one partner is also odd.

But, speaking to the human — Jason, he’s called — Dick grows to understand why.

He counts four more moon cycles as they talk on the beach, every night after Jason lights the lamp in the light house. The plants on the island start to change color, and Jason, huddled in heavier clothes as time goes on, tells him the names of things and explains why they shed their leaves and shrivel into orange and brown patches on the ground.

Dick, in turn, tells him about the things that scuttle on the ocean floor, and the colors of coral reefs and how eight-legged creatures sometimes hide inside them, perfectly taking on the tone and texture of their surroundings. Jason sometimes shares the human words for things, like “shrimp” and “octopus” and “eel,” and Dick laughs at how absurd they sound as he commits them to memory.

Gift-giving becomes an important part of their nightly conversations. Dick shows off the human objects he’s collected and stored across the ocean, and brings up abandoned shells and pieces of dense coral that Jason admires with a crooked smile on his face. Jason, in turn, brings him things from his home, especially paper things like maps and books, ones that can’t withstand being plunged into the water.

It’s a fun life, while it lasts. But, invariably, Jason has to trudge back up the island to go to sleep, and Dick can only watch him go, waves crashing around his tail.

He longs to go with him. To see what the inside of his house looks like. To go all the way up to the top and watch him ignite the light, and see what the ocean looks like from so high above it. To know what it’s like to sit by a fire, warm and bundled up, eating human foods and being near Jason when he falls asleep at night.

The worst stretches of loneliness are when Jason takes a boat he calls a “ferry” to the mainland, when he needs to stock up on supplies. Dick could follow him easily, of course, but the docks are so crowded with humans and boats, day and night, all yelling and bustling and running and fishing, that he’d never be able to get near the shore without someone spotting him.

The moon is gone again when he finally decides what he wants to do. It’s crazy, and it may not work, but Dick is determined to try. He can’t live like this much longer, circling the island in lazy laps, counting the seconds until the light comes on and Jason comes down to meet him.

He swims out, far from the island, and plunges down into a place where no light ever touches, and other sea creatures rarely go. A place where the pressure squeezes him tighter than usual, and the sand is nowhere to be seen.

Dick circles around big, jutting rocks, wondering if maybe the tales he’s heard were all exaggerated falsehoods. If he’s chasing after someone who doesn’t exist, sacrificing precious time with Jason to pursue a fantasy.

Just when he’s about given up hope, he hears a voice coming from a dark crevice behind him.

“You’re looking for me, I suppose.”

Turning, Dick watches as two green lights start as pinpricks in the depths of the rocks, then grow larger as they approach him. Not just the eyes, but the mer’s entire body, his scales shimmering with a luminescence that has nothing to do with the sun. He doubts the sun’s ever touched this man, honestly.

“Uh, yeah, I—” In the presence of a deep-sea mer, Dick forgets the carefully planned-out question he’s been mulling over for weeks. He’s never met one himself, and this one has an aura of regality to him. “I heard you, uh. Do magic?”

Floating just outside the cavern entrance, the old mer gives him a smirk that makes the back of Dick’s neck tingle. “If you’d like to put it in such larval terms. What sort of ‘magic’ are you looking for, pray tell?”

Dick feels like he’s being mocked. He presses on anyway. “I want to walk on land. With the humans. _As_ a human.”

There’s a raise of a pointy gray eyebrow, and the mer’s smirk grows wider above the tidy goatee on his chin. “A human? You’d give up your freedom to live among the very creatures that seek to commodify what they can ascribe value to, and destroy what they cannot?”

“This isn’t freedom,” Dick says, resolute. “I thought it was, once, but… Listen, can you do it or not?”

The old mer turns slightly, regarding Dick with an up-and-down stare that creeps across his body like crawling sand crabs. His glowing green eyes land on the pouch wrapped around Dick’s waist, sodden and fish-bitten, secured with dull brass buckles.

“I suppose you’ve brought an offering to make it worth my while?”

“Oh! Uh…” Dick scrambles to open the pouch, and the pressure of the deep sea, thankfully, keeps everything inside from immediately floating upward. “I’ve got things from the human world. I didn’t know what you would want, so…”

He pulls the objects out one by one. His favorite carved pot, with sculpted flowers decorating the base and paint that still hasn’t chipped off entirely. A gilded cage that Jason says is supposed to be used for birds, but Dick supposes would make a good trap for underwater creatures as well. The glass set in silver called “mirror,” the one he’s always loved to look at himself in.

He tells himself he won’t be needing it if this works out for him. He can get another one any time he wants.

To his dismay, the old mer frowns at his offerings. Even after Dick shows him that the inside of the pot is filled with jewelry, he doesn’t seem very enthused. Dick opens his mouth to beg, to plead, when the mer speaks up.

“What about that, at the bottom there?”

“Wh— Oh, yeah! That,” Dick says, pulling it free. “This is called a ‘dagger.’ Humans use it for fights. They have bigger versions, called swords, I can get them for you if you—”

“No need.” The mer cuts him off with a wave of his hand. “Let me see it.”

Dick hands it over. Like most of the human objects he owns, the dagger isn’t in pristine condition. The metal, while sharp, is dull in color, and the handle’s carvings have long since been obscured by barnacles. And yet, despite its flaws, the old mer seems to take a liking to it, if the way he scrutinizes it is any indication.

After what seems like an eternity, he says, “This will suffice. Come. I will give you what you seek.”

The old mer, Dick learns, is named Ra’s. Ra’s leads him deep into the cavern, far deeper than Dick thought possible. The water, strangely, begins to warm instead of cool him, contrary to everything he thought he knew about the ocean.

And then, slowly, he sees it. It starts as a green glow, the same as Ra’s emits, but bigger. Brighter. Before long, they’re floating above a great cavern, at the bottom of which sits a pit filled with the most sickly green liquid Dick has ever seen.

“The Pit will give you what you seek,” Ra’s says, one hand outstretched toward it. “Focus on your desire, and it will change you.”

Dick suddenly feels a lump in his throat, like a minnow getting caught inside it. He swallows. “Right here? Will I still be able to… to breathe…?”

“The change takes time to complete,” Ra’s tells him. “You will have from the time the sun rises until it sets to get to dry land.”

Floating slowly down, Dick nods. The heat of the Pit curls around his tail, sinks into his bones. He wonders if this is a trick, if he’ll melt and turn to seafoam if he touches it.

But he doesn’t exactly have a choice, if he wants to be with Jason.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, I got it.”

Once again, Ra’s arches a brow at him. “Are you certain this is what you desire, guppy? You will never be able to return to your true form once the Pit re-shapes you.”

Dick’s thought long and hard about it. He doesn’t need to think any more.

“Maybe this isn’t my true form,” he says, and he swims down, plunging himself into a sea of viscous, eye-searing green.

* * *

“Jason! Jason!”

He ignores it at first. Chalks it up to Dick being too eager to wait for him to light the lamp, as he sometimes is.

“ _Jason!_ Jay—”

But then he notices the strange quality the voice has. Panicked, almost. And when it chokes off, he pauses halfway up the spiral staircase and runs all the way back down.

He’s never crossed the length of the island so fast. On his way, he hears a few more cries, and some choking when he gets closer. By the time he charges onto the beach, sand and shells coming up in plumes around his boots, Dick has gone silent, and Jason can see why.

He’s lying face down in the surf, claw marks in the wet sand by his hands.

And he’s got legs.

_Human legs._

Jason has to turn him over to be sure it’s really him, and it is, that’s _Dick’s_ face, Dick’s hair, Dick’s long lashes shut over his blue eyes. He doesn’t know what’s happening, doesn’t pause to think about it, just bends down and breathes life into Dick, returning the favor from so long ago.

“Sorry for scaring you.” Bundled up in Jason’s blankets, Dick gives him a sheepish smile. He’s breathing now, but sitting down, his new legs dangling over the side of Jason’s bed. “I thought swimming would be easy enough even without my tail, but… I guess I was wrong.”

“I don’t understand,” Jason says, for what must be the thousandth time this evening. “How did this happen?”

“I told you,” Dick says, patient and calm. “I visited a deep-sea witch, and he used his magic pit to turn me human.”

The third time he hears it doesn’t make it any clearer than the first. Jason decides to switch tactics.

“But _why?_ ”

“Well, I thought… I thought that—” Dick looks down at himself, and suddenly seems to take notice of his fist for the first time. It’s been clenched since Jason found him, protective even in his unconsciousness, but now, he holds it out and unfurls his fingers. “Here. I got this for you.”

Jason looks down to see a small, rusted ring sitting in his palm.

* * *

So his big proposal didn’t go as planned. Apparently, humans have laws against two males entering into the marriage contract for some reason, which would have been nice to know beforehand, but it’s not like it changes his decision any. It’s okay. Dick runs with it.

(“Runs with it” is human-speak for “goes along with it, even though things didn’t work out properly in the first place.”)

It’s not the only kind of running he does. He has to learn to walk first, of course, but Jason is an excellent teacher, sticking close to show him how to balance on land and catch him when he falls. It’s so _different,_ not being able to rely on the weightlessness of water to keep him steady. On land, you have to stick to one place, the ground, and can’t jump up and let the current take you somewhere all on its own.

So that’s a little disappointing. But other parts of the human world make up for it by far.

For one, there’s the feeling of grass under his feet. It tickles, and sticks in between his toes, a sensation he can’t compare to anything he’s ever felt before in his life. Jason, exasperated, has to keep chasing him down with those human garments called “shoes,” insisting he put them on. Dick doesn’t quite understand it until one day he steps on a sharp rock, and, lip quivering, relents to Jason’s rules after having his foot bandaged.

For two, there’s the view from the light house. It’s even more splendid than he ever could have imagined. From above, the ocean sparkles, and it almost curves as it stretches into the distance, one great big expanse of twinkling blue. During the day, he sits up in the tower and feeds the gulls that come to perch nearby (which Jason makes a fuss over, calling them “food-snatching little sky-pests”). At night, he stays up until the overwhelming heat of the lamp gets too hot to bear, watching the moonlight glitter like it’s dripping into the ocean as steadily as sweat drips off his nose.

And then there’s the city. A real, human _city._ There isn’t room to run like Dick does across the island once he learns, but he loves bumping shoulders with living, breathing humans, big and small and old and young and male and female, all living in close quarters, laughing and bartering and yelling and singing. When he joins in, heads turn, but people don’t shy away from him like he’s a monster, or throw themselves at him like mindless animals. They smile, and they get louder, and Jason watches nearby, always declining to showcase his own voice.

He learns so much about human life the first few times they go to the mainland. What humans wear (females get longer, cone-shaped clothes with pretty lace and ribbons, and males show off their legs and doff three-cornered hats, which seems awfully unfair to Dick, who likes aspects of both); what they eat (there are land creatures bigger and fatter than he realized, able to feed dozens of humans just from one); and why they put those funny little faces on their metal (called “money,” the thing that humans use to barter for other things, and the coins only depict the most important and respected of humans - even if they make those nonsensical “no marrying another male” laws).

He still doesn’t know everything, though. Jason is surprisingly cagey about some aspects of human life. Like, for example, on their current trip to the mainland, when they have to take a detour through a different part of town than usual.

A woman, with her dress down low and her bosoms pushed up, waves from the doorway of a large house, calling out to them.

“Aye, now, beautiful lads on a beautiful night,” she says with a grin. “Mr. Lightkeeper, are ye? Why not come on inside with yer pretty friend and show our girls some love?”

Pretty friend. That’s him! Dick smiles back and quickly takes a detour, intending to join the nice woman and her girls for a night of whatever fun they have in mind, but Jason’s hand on his upper arm sharply tugs him back.

“No thank you,” he says, and when Dick shoots him a questioning look, he sees Jason’s gaze averted down and to the side, and his face red to his ears. “Have a lovely night, ma’am.”

“What? But why?” Dick asks. He tugs at the hold, but Jason stays firm, steering him down the street. He looks back at the woman, disappointed but still smirking at them, her eyes a bit lower than their faces. “She said we were beautiful!”

“She wants our money, Dick,” Jason says, low, lips barely moving like he’s saying something shameful.

“Our money? For what?”

“I’ll tell you later. C’mon, we have our ferry to catch.”

Jason doesn’t tell him when they’re on the ferry. He doesn’t tell them when they unpack their supplies and store new food all around the kitchen. He doesn’t even tell him over dinner, even though Dick, breaking his cooked fish into pieces with his fingers, pesters him about it.

“I just don’t see why they’re any different than the other merchants.”

“Dick...”

“What if you’re wrong, and she really just wanted to make friends with us?”

“Dick.”

“Is it because they’re all girls? Do you have a problem with girls?”

“ _Dick!_ ”

Jason slams a hand onto the table so hard that their utensils clatter. He’s red again, which suits him, Dick thinks, but apparently humans only turn that color when they’re embarrassed about something.

“If you finish eating without asking me about it again, I promise I’ll tell you after we wash up. Okay? Is that soon enough for you?”

Dick shoves a piece of salmon into his mouth and nods enthusiastically. Jason settles back down into his seat, red draining to pink, and tries to avert his eyes for the rest of the meal. Dick sees him looking when he thinks his attention is on his plate, little glances that he can’t quite parse the meaning of. Though he’s buzzing with questions, Dick keeps silent, finishing his food before heading to the tiny water closet to wash his hands and brush his teeth.

He waits, practically vibrating on the small, upholstered couch, as Jason takes his turn, though for whatever reason, he takes a bit longer than usual to come out. When he does, his face is red again, and he’s pushing a hand back through his hair to keep it out of his face, the way he does when he’s trying to find the words for something.

“Okay. So… You know how I’ve told you about human mating,” Jason says.

“Yes.”

“And how humans can do… _that…_ for reasons other than reproduction?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, some humans… They sell their, ah… their time and their bodies, for… Well, for money.”

Dick looks at him for a moment, waiting for him to go on. When he doesn’t, and the silence sinks in around him, it gives Dick a chance to realize what he’s saying.

“They wanted to mate with us!” he exclaims, smacking a fist into the palm of his hand. “Oh! Well, you could’ve just told me that. Why does the idea of mating always make you act so strange? Haven’t you done it before?”

Jason, if possible, goes even redder, like a crab after being boiled. “Listen, Dick, there are things you still don’t understand—”

“So tell me!” Dick leaps to his feet, proud of the way he doesn’t stumble as he crosses the small distance toward Jason. “You act like I’m still a fish fresh out of water. When are you going to trust me? When are you going to treat me like a—”

Jason grabs him by the cheeks and pulls him forward, crushing their lips together. Dick’s eyes remain wide, so he can see the way Jason’s are closed, with his brows furrowed together in an intense crease on his forehead.

When they part seconds later, Dick finishes his sentence on an exhale. “—human. _Oh._ ”

Jason is breathing heavier than normal. His hands remain on either side of Dick’s face, but softer now. He’s still staring at Dick’s lips.

“That,” he says, “was called a kiss. Do you have those under the water…?”

Mutely, Dick shakes his head. He feels speechless for the first time in his life.

“Well. That’s generally seen as— as, uh— step one, to… to mating,” Jason tells him. He goes to pull his hands away, but Dick captures them, keeping them pressed to his cheeks.

“Can we do it again…?”

Dick can tell it’s a yes before it happens, by the way Jason’s eyelids droop. Then they’re “kissing” again, and what a lovely thing it is, a human kiss. Dick’s lips are so full of feeling, and Jason’s are a paradoxical mix of hard and soft, cracked by the sea winds, but still warm and plush, and they move in a way that makes Dick’s head spin.

He follows Jason’s lead, the way he puckers and relaxes his lips, and occasionally takes one of Dick’s lips between both of his own, sucking, applying just a hint of teeth. Never enough to hurt; only enough that Dick _feels_ them, and he gasps, not daring to pull away. Jasons’ tongue slides in a second later, and, while Dick isn’t expecting it, he finds he quite likes the way it feels. His tongue rises up to join in, dancing and writhing against Jason’s the way sea jellies tangle around each other.

Dick mirrors Jason’s hand placement, his palms on Jason’s cheeks. He likes the defined feel of Jason’s jaw under his hands, the slight scrape of stubble that he hasn’t yet shaved off. Jason is a mess of those contradictions — the soft lips with rough cracks, the smooth cheeks with scratchy hairs. Even his hands, weather-worn and covered in hard patches of toughened skin, are so gentle with Dick’s face, like he’s worried he may break him if he squeezes too hard.

To show him that he won’t, Dick presses against Jason harder. He makes little noises of approval when Jason’s teeth find his lips or his tongue, pulls him closer when Jason’s hands start to tighten.

It lasts much longer this time, but, eventually, Jason pulls back. Dick chases him, gives him one last kiss, but Jason pushes his face back and presses a finger to his lips.

“If we don’t stop soon,” he says, with a breathless quality to his voice like he’s just been underwater for too long. “If we don’t stop, I… I might end up doing more. And I don’t want you to—”

“What if I want to?” Dick asks, insistent. There’s something brewing in the deepest part of his stomach that he’s never felt before, not like _this._ “I don’t want to wait anymore. I want to see what’s so good that humans spend money to have it. I don’t mind if we end up mating out of season. I’ll take care of the guppies, I just—”

Jason silences him with another kiss, and this time, Dick can feel his lips curved into a smile, can hear Jason chuckle softly up against him. When they part, Dick cocks his head, confused.

“You don’t have to worry about anything like that,” Jason says, rubbing his thumb over Dick’s lower lip. “Humans don’t mate on a schedule. And we’re both men, remember? Two males can’t have… ‘guppies.’”

“Oh,” Dick says, feeling naive and a little stupid again. “Right.”

“I just don’t want to do anything you might be uncomfortable with,” Jason goes on. “I know everything down there is, uh… _new_ for you. I mean, have you ever even… touched yourself…?”

“You mean like, to use the toilet?” Dick asks. He doesn’t know why Jason laughs in response.

“Not really,” he says. “Well, kind of. You’re touching the same place, but it’s… different. It _feels_ different. And different things happen.”

“Show me,” Dick says.

“Are you sure? I—”

“ _Show me,_ ” Dick repeats. The last time he was this confident about something, he was miles under the water, bartering with a merman who glowed sickly green.

Jason stares at his lips again.

“...Alright.”

They climb up the ladder to their sleeping quarters. For the past few months, they’ve been sharing a bed, which is what they’re doing now. Except this time, Jason doesn’t have his back turned, all squished up against the wall. Now, they’re facing each other, Dick on his back, with Jason kneeling above him.

“...We’ll need to be naked,” he says, toying with the low collar of Dick’s shirt. “Is that okay with—”

Dick’s already shimmying out of his clothes. If there’s one part of human life he’s still not too thrilled about, it’s having to wear clothes _all_ the time, and only the clothes that the coin-faces decided are “appropriate” enough for a male. He’s stripped down to his bare skin in record time.

He expects Jason to do the same, but by the time Dick’s out of his clothes, Jason is still in the same place, just… staring. Staring down at his body, with his bottom lip between his teeth, and his eyes all glossy and half-lidded again. Dick looks down, and he’s still a little bit mystified every time he sees his new body. His legs, which can spread wide apart and move independently of each other, and his mating organ, which, oddly, is standing straight up. It normally only does that in the mornings, sometimes, and whenever he’s asked about it before, Jason has always changed the subject and refused to give a straight answer.

“Is it supposed to do that…?” Dick asks, one hand trailing over his side and down between his legs, stopping at the base of his erect length.

Jason nods. “Mine is, too. Here…”

He takes Dick by the wrist and guides his hand down, placing it on top of the tent in his pants. Intrigued by the size and shape, Dick gropes around it, Jason exhaling softly, close enough to his face that Dick feels his breath ghost across his lashes.

“Aren’t you going to show me?” he asks, vaguely aware that his own voice has softened, like there’s some unspoken rule that they shouldn’t be loud right now.

Jason pauses, searching Dick’s eyes like he’s looking for something there. Then he leans back and begins to disrobe, first his heavy outer layers, then his shirt, showing off sun-worn skin and a few scars that Dick thinks he might ask about later. But for now, he’s fixated on the trail of dark hair leading down from Jason’s belly button to under his pants. As Jason undoes the buttons and shoves them down, that trail widens, leading to a meadow of dense curls around his upright, flushed member.

It’s different than Dick’s own. Thicker, with a more defined vein on the side, and a shiny tip, which Dick skims his fingers over. Jason gasps, guiding Dick to wrap his hand around the shaft.

“What does this do?” Dick asks, moving his hand up and down the way Jason shows him.

“It feels good,” Jason says.

“Oh.” Dick wraps his other hand around his own length, mimicking the movements Jason shows him on himself. His toes curl, and his lashes flutter; sinking into the mattress, he feels himself throb in his palm. “ _Oh._ ”

Slowly, Jason replaces Dick’s hand with his own, the two of them stroking each other in tandem. But Jason’s hand is practiced, more skilled than Dick’s, tugging and twisting in subtle ways that Dick can’t even begin to replicate. Mostly because he’s too busy twitching and shaking underneath Jason to concentrate much on anything else.

Jason kisses him again, swallowing up his moans and yelps. It’s hot and it’s suffocating, almost predatory, but in the best possible way. He feels Jason’s desire bleed through with every swipe of his tongue, every flick of his wrist. It’s a desire, he realizes, that can’t have possibly sprung up out of the woodwork all of a sudden. It’s been there blazing like a human bonfire all this time, its searing heat just hidden from Dick, flames warming the water until Dick has no choice but to breach the surface and embrace it.

Dick wants it all, all the passion, all the fury. Wants to know everything there is to know about human mating, about bonding, about what he’s heard sailors and drunks call _fucking._ He whimpers into Jason’s mouth, free hand dragging him down by the neck, keeping him close, nonverbally begging for more.

Jason only breaks the kiss to growl, lips brushing Dick’s with every word.

“How does that feel?”

“Good,” Dick gasps, hips twitching up into Jason’s hand. “B-better than good.”

“Do you want to feel something even better?”

Dick nods, sweaty forehead against Jason’s, their hair tangled together, wet like they’ve just taken a swim.

Then Jason pulls his hand away, and he nearly sobs. Doesn’t understand why he _aches_ for Jason’s touch all of a sudden, why it makes him want to cry when it’s gone; all he knows is that he wants, no, _needs_ more.

“Jason,” he whines, as Jason abandons his lips to kiss a trail down his sensitive neck. “ _Jason._ ”

Jason keeps going, pausing at his chest to work over his nipples with those teeth and that tongue. Dick never knew they could feel so good, never even imagined someone teasing them like that. Merfolk mating is quick and brutal, a simple dance of clashing tails and fertilizing eggs, without much room for pleasure and bonding. Human mating, it seems, is the exact opposite: considerate, sensual, and _slow._

By the time Jason’s mouth makes its way down his stomach, Dick is trembling with oversensitivity. He holds onto Jason’s neck and shoulders until his knuckles turn white, very rapidly realizing where this is going, wound tight like a brand new fisherman’s net.

He looks down, watching Jason kiss over the soft base of his length. Jason looks back up at him, and there’s something so intimate about that look that Dick’s whole body thrums with heat.

“Jason,” he says again, like it’s the only word he knows. “Jason, _please._ ”

Jason’s lips curve into a smile, Dick can feel it on his skin, see it in his eyes. A light chuckle rumbles in his throat, vibrates against Dick’s body.

“You’re so adorable like this,” he says, palms smoothing up Dick’s legs from his knees to his inner thighs. “I like it. I like it a lot.”

No matter how much he poked and prodded and rubbed at his new legs when he first traded his tail in for them, it never felt like _this._ Never so hot and intense, that foreign sensation of having something between them where there was never supposed to be any “between” in the first place. It has him tense and shaking, desperate to feel something he hadn’t even considered up ‘til tonight.

“Wh-what are you going to do?” he asks Jason, shivering, needing to know with his entire being.

“I’m going to kiss you here,” Jason says, kissing the base of his length. “And here,” the center. “And here,” the tip, where it’s most sensitive, so much so that it makes him twitch just feeling that simple press of lips. “And then I’m going to suck your cock.”

Dick doesn’t understand how mouths fit into the mating process, but right now, he doesn’t care. Jason could tell him that next they have to swallow raw eggs and spin in circles on their heads, and he’d do it, just to feel more of that exquisite pleasure.

He doesn’t say that, of course. He just teaches Dick exactly what a “cock” is by sliding his lips over Dick’s, enveloping the tip and then the shaft in his soft, wet mouth.

Dick makes a sound he’s never heard himself make before. It’s like the cry of a cat mixed with the bellow of a whale, but so clear in the air, turning his cheeks red when he realizes the noise is coming from _him._ Jason’s tongue smoothes over the underside of his length, working in tandem with his lips and hand as he bobs up and down, up and down. Dick’s fingers curl in his hair so tightly that it has to be painful, but if it is, Jason doesn’t show it, undeterred in his mission to make Dick feel things he’d never thought possible.

When he removes his mouth for a second, Dick feels a heavy loss, only for it to be replaced by Jason wrapping his lips around the balls hanging below his cock. It’s another new sensation that he isn’t prepared for, but he likes it just as much as all the rest, and he lets Jason know by way of his moans.

Slowly, carefully, he feels Jason push his legs up, hands under his thighs to keep them up and bent. Then he kisses underneath Dick’s balls, over the stretch of skin separating them from his hole. When Jason’s tongue presses against that spot, it feels different, not sensitive in the way his cock is, but deeper, softer. Jason rubs little circles into his legs with his thumbs, stalling with his breath ghosting over Dick’s most private regions.

“There is… something else we could try,” he says, halting again, in that nervous way from before. But laced with the apprehension is something darker, needier, like he’s a shark trying to hold back from biting into a school of fish. “It’s a little… strange. For two men to do. But it feels—”

“Yes,” Dick says without hesitation. “Yes, do it. I want to— to feel it all. Everything that a human does, Jason. _Please._ ”

“You don’t even know what it is,” Jason says, and that smile returns, pressed against his inner thigh.

Dick feels his face flush with red. “If it’s you, it’ll feel good. I know it will.”

The smile fades, and there’s that predator’s gaze again, the one that’s rapidly becoming one of Dick’s favorite sights to see. Jason nuzzles his cock, licks where his shaft and balls meet.

“Okay. So, human women, they’re… different, here,” he says. “They have an opening where men can put their— their cocks, and it’s how we reproduce. Men can’t reproduce together, but they can still… feel good, like that.”

“Different… holes,” Dick says, staring up at the ceiling in dull confusion. The lesson is so much more clinical than the things Jason is doing with his fingers and tongue.

“Don’t worry too much about it,” Jason tells him. “Just know that women can get… wetter, so it takes a little more work for men, but I can still…” He sighs, voice tinged with what Dick thinks is impatience. “...Let me just show you.”

_That’s what I’ve been telling you all this time,_ Dick thinks, but he can’t say anything when Jason lifts him by the hips and swirls his tongue over his bottom-most hole. He only gasps, then keens, fingers tightening in Jason’s hair all over again.

His tongue is magical. That must be it. More magical than a deep-sea witch and his enchanted pit, more magical than the sound of music on a crowded street. Because the things it makes Dick feel, the ways it tears him apart and puts him back together again, it can’t be ordinary. Jason must be special, no matter how hard he tries to hide behind a veneer of mundanity and introversion.

Just when Dick thinks that’s the peak of this new lesson, he feels Jason’s tongue draw back, replaced by a circling finger. Still dazed from the pleasure, Dick doesn’t even tense up when that finger presses inside, even though it’s a strange sensation that feels more alien than anything else they’ve done. Jason starts to move it in and out, mouth staying low to keep it dripping wet. He moves it around, quirks it when it goes deeper, and then Dick feels something that makes his body shake and his eyes roll into the back of his head.

“How’s that feel?” Jason asks, but his voice is rushed and muffled, so it comes out sounding more like _howzzat._

“I want more,” Dick says in lieu of an answer. “I want more. Jason, please, _please,_ I want— _Oh!_ ”

The stretch of a second finger surprises him, and it’s a tighter fit than the first one, but then Jason takes his cock into his mouth again, and Dick can’t fight against it. Doesn’t _want_ to fight against it. The dual sensation of Jason’s mouth sucking him down and his fingers rocking in and out is like nothing Dick could ever have imagined. Every time they slide in deep, Jason’s fingers curl into that spot again, and it’s like he’s pressing a button to release magma into Dick’s veins, melting him from the inside out.

His moans are the chorus to the song they’re writing with their bodies, and Jason must know, because he pulls away and whispers, “Sing for me, pretty nightingale.”

When Jason’s mouth next descends, Dick can only obey, hips rocking in time with Jason’s fingers like some obscene dance. His voice echoes off the narrow walls of the bedroom, the mattress squeaking under them, wet sounds playing as an underlying beat to their symphony. The tempo increases with Dick’s heartbeat, and then he feels it, the climax, begging Jason to bring him there even though he doesn’t know exactly where they’re going.

“Please, please, please, please, please, _please, please—!_ ”

His voice chokes off into a high-pitched, stuttering whimper, as waves of pleasure rock his body the way storms rock ships. He feels just as helpless to it as sailors must feel in a hurricane. The fingers inside him draw out something deep and relaxing, a perfect compliment to the way his balls twitch in Jason’s hand. He can feel something rush out of his cock, but before he can apologize to Jason in case he’s done something wrong, Jason just drinks it down, incorporating it into his flawless rhythm.

It takes Dick several moments until he’s able to see again, past the white haze blanking out his vision. When he does, he sees Jason lick something just as white from the corner of his mouth, but he misses a spot on his chin. Without thinking, Dick lifts a shaky hand and swipes his finger through the mess.

The glob of liquid on his finger is too opaque and thick to be spit. Is this what came out of him…? Panting, he pops his finger into his mouth, tasting it. His nose wrinkles at the salty tang, but it isn’t terrible.

“What was that?” he asks once he swallows, which, in retrospect, would have probably been a good question to ask beforehand.

“Ah… Semen,” Jason answers, breathing heavily himself.

Dick’s eyes go wide. “Seamen?!”

Jason realizes his mistake when he sees the panic on Dick’s face. “No, not like—! It’s, er… cum. What men use to… fertilize women’s eggs.”

“Oh.” Dick, still confused, relaxes against the pillows. “And did you…?”

He looks down to figure it out for himself, but, while his cock has softened, Jason’s is still standing upright. A bead of clear liquid is gathered at the tip, and Dick has to wonder if Jason’s “cum” is clear, or if this is something else entirely. Humans are such neverending mysteries.

Jason shakes his head to confirm. “But don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

Dick’s brow creases. “Are you not going to put it inside me? Like you said?”

“Er… I wasn’t counting on you coming so fast,” Jason says, with a sheepish shrug. “If you’re not turned on, it’ll just hurt you, so…”

Though embarrassed, Dick stands firm. “But I want you to feel good, too.” Eyes lighting up like he’s just had a wonderful idea, he gives Jason a wide smile. “Hey, I’ll use my mouth on you! Would that work?”

Jason licks his lips. His eyes are like two black pits surrounded by a ring of deep ocean blue. “...Yeah. Yeah, that’d work.”

He sits back, and Dick follows, still out of breath and loose-limbed from his finish, but enthusiastic. He starts like Jason did, first kissing down his neck, then over his broad, tanned chest. He’s got much more hair than Dick, though not as covered in it as some humans are. There’s a fine dusting of it to kiss through as he makes his way to Jason’s nipples, and dense fur in the pits of his arms that smell musky in a way that makes Dick’s mouth water.

His tongue follows that thin trail of hair down Jason’s stomach and beyond, and he nuzzles into the curls at the base of his cock, just breathing it in, feeling the heat of Jason’s heavy length beside his cheek. When he looks up, Jason is staring down at him, tip of his tongue clenched between his teeth, all muscle and voracious hunger.

The first swipe of his tongue up the underside proves less flavorful than Dick imagined. Just like normal skin, really, if a bit saltier with sweat. He laps up the clear fluid, which has a bit more taste to it, a little reminiscent of the sea. It’s with that comforting thought in mind that he begins to descend around Jason’s length, stretching his mouth wide to accommodate it.

Jason makes it seem a lot easier than it is. It’s difficult to get his mouth wide enough _and_ “mind the teeth,” as Jason tells him, while also sucking and using his tongue. Brows furrowed, glaring in determination at Jason’s pelvis, he wraps a hand around Jason’s cock and uses it as a buffer as he slowly tries to take more and more of him in. Every time he gets frustrated at his lack of progress, he hears a soft noise from Jason, and that’s enough to renew his efforts tenfold.

Jason’s fingers stroke through his hair, pushing his bangs away from his face, tangling behind his head. “ _Look at you…_ You’re doing so good, you— _Nnh._ ”

His hips cant up, and Dick feels the tip of his prick touch the back of his throat. It brings with it a rush of saliva that floods his mouth, and he coughs, but doesn’t pull back.

“Hey, you don’t have to— Oh. _Ohh._ ”

Ignoring Jason, he tries again, consciously tamping down his gag reflex. Now that he knows what sort of feeling to expect, it’s easier. Not _easy_ by any means, but Dick is a fast learner, and he’s quick to adapt.

But it’s not enough all on his own. He can’t seem to crest that final few inches, even though Jason took his whole cock in so perfectly. And sure, Dick is slimmer, and yeah, Jason must have had experience before this, but Dick’s never been one to give up before, and he doesn’t intend to start now.

He pulls off Jason’s cock, stroking the wet length of it in the meantime. “Push my head down. I can’t get the rest of it in like this.”

Jason lets out a breathless laugh, red and sweating. “You don’t have to—”

“I want to.” Dick nuzzles Jason’s cock, reaches back to press Jason’s hand into his head more insistently. “I want you to come, Jason. I want you to use me to make you feel good.”

Jason mutters an obscenity under his breath. He tugs at a few strands of Dick’s hair, wraps them around his finger.

“You’re too much…”

Dick smiles back up at him, swaying his hips back and forth. “Please?”

That seems to do the trick. Jason sits up a little further, bracing both his hands on either side of Dick’s head.

“Deep breath,” he says.

Dick obeys. Jason plunges in.

It’s hot, and wet, and fast. Drool dribbles down Dick’s chin, unable to _not_ be messy with how Jason fucks his face. He can’t help but wonder what that cock would feel like in his ass, if it would be even better than his fingers. He sees now why people would pay money for this, if it’s always so heart-poundingly wonderful.

And it seems like it makes Jason more vocal, too. He speaks in that powerful, rough voice of his, low and jagged, the type of growl that only a land creature can manage.

“Look so beautiful, you know that? Even when you’re like this,” he says. His thumb skims under Dick’s eye, where a tear (of exertion, not sadness) has gathered. “So messy around my cock. Been thinking so, nngh, _so_ long about this, want you _so_ bad…”

It’s nice to hear confirmed what Dick already knows. That those glances of Jason’s haven’t all been innocent. That his reluctance to talk about mating didn’t come from a place of disinterest or disgust. He whimpers around Jason’s length, not from distress, but to let him know just how well his words are received.

Jason grunts, and Dick has to grab his hips to keep himself steady. He can feel the tip of Jason’s cock reach deeper and deeper with every other thrust, and, while he occasionally chokes and spits up viscous saliva around Jason’s shaft, it gets smoother every time. His scalp burns from being tugged and his face is wet with tears, sweat, and spit, but Dick wouldn’t have it any other way, would let Jason drown him like this if he wanted.

And then, _then,_ he feels the scratch of hair up against his nose and lips, and realizes how deep Jason is inside him, how far he’s stretched out his throat. Dick _moans,_ and Jason definitely feels it, his cock twitching, a drop of hot liquid dripping down Dick’s throat. All he can do is swallow, nostrils flaring, hips grinding against the bed, even though his oversensitive cock refuses to harden again.

“You’re lovely,” Jason gasps. “ _Lovely._ Want to— t-to make you look even better… Want it, Dick? Want me to paint you?”

Dick has no idea what that means, but he moans in agreement. Anything to hear Jason’s voice hitch like that some more, to feel his hard cock throb on his tongue.

“So good,” Jason says, pulling back a little to fuck Dick’s face more shallowly. “So fucking good. Open, Dick, keep your mouth open wide…”

As if he can do anything else. Dick feels like his jaw might permanently stay open, even as Jason draws back and starts quickly stroking himself. It aches, but it’s a good kind of ache, like after swimming for miles. He laves his tongue over the pink head of Jason’s cock, tasting even more salt from the slit.

And then Jason makes the most arousing, guttural sounds he’s ever heard, bucking hard into his hand, holding Dick’s head back with the hand in his hair, so far that his neck stretches almost uncomfortably. Jason’s cock pulses harder than before, and Dick watches as several spurts of thick, white cum surge out of it. It splatters over his tongue and across his lips, one heavy droplet landing high on his cheek, warming the skin as it drips down.

With more in his mouth, the flavor is much stronger. Dick yearns to swallow it, but Jason told him to stay put, so he stays, letting Jason wipe the head of his twitching cock off on an untouched part of his lip.

Slowly, as Jason catches his breath, he sinks down into a proper sitting position, untangling his fingers from Dick’s hair. With that hand, he pinches Dick’s chin, pushing his mouth closed.

Dick swallows. “You taste like home,” he says, before he can think better of it.

Jason quirks a brow, looking first confused, then tickled. He laughs softly, pulling Dick up to press a kiss to his lips, letting their tastes mingle together and combine into something new.

“Good thing you’re home, then,” he says.

Dick smiles against his lips, thinking of the rusted ring that he sometimes sees Jason slip onto his finger when he thinks no one’s looking.

“Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

**Author's Note:**

> hit me up on [tumblr](https://dicktofen.tumblr.com/) or [twitter!](https://twitter.com/ultradadnaya)


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